Traditionally the television broadcastsboth the old analogue ones and the current digital terrestrial ones known as TDT, have reached our homes through an antennaindividual or collective, which received the signal from the channels and transferred it to the TV or external decoders in our homes.
It has been a very effective system for years, but with a drawback: the quality and stability of the image and sound. has always been relatively poorwith reception problems in some cases, especially if we compare it with the rest of the content distribution options that we currently have at our disposal.
Why DTT from the antenna looks so bad
This relative poor audiovisual quality It is one of the problems that we fans of image and sound usually complain about, and the reasons why it occurs are basically two.
In the first place, the television signal suffers all kinds of interference that degrades image quality and sound, even preventing in some cases that we can enjoy the broadcast without cuts, especially with DTT and in regions far from the stations.
Although the broadcast has error control systems that should protect us from these inconveniences, in reality, they can’t do magic and if the signal does not arrive with enough power we have images with artifacts and a notable degradation. But the main problem with DTT image quality is in the binary rate used by strings for its transmission, which is very low if we compare it with other equivalent systems.
In Spain, the technology used for broadcasting is the DVB-T standard, while the DVB-T2 version finally prevails, which works in the UHF band, with 64QAM modulation and a bandwidth of each channel 8 MHz.
For DTT in standard definition (SD), it is broadcast by compressing the video with the MPEG-2 codec at a 576i resolution (interlaced)corresponding to the PAL analog format and which is equivalent to that used in the DVD-Video format, and for DTT in HD, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is used at a 720p (progressive) or 1080i (interlaced) resolutionsomewhat lower than the image of, for example, a conventional Blu-ray.
However, the problem in image quality is not the resolution, but the bit rate that is limited by the available bandwidth of each broadcast multiplex (those 8 MHz) through which they are transmitted. various television, radio and data channelswith a total bitrate slightly less than 20 Mbps to be shared depending on the resolution and the type of program.
This implies that, in practice, the channels have a total effective bandwidth that in most cases (there are some exceptions such as TVE-HD) does not exceed 3.5-5Mbpsvery far from, for example, the binary rate of a Blu-ray (which can easily be around 30-40 Mbps) and even lower than what we can enjoy on streaming services such as YouTube, Netflix and the like.
Therefore, given the current limitations on emissions from the DTT via “antenna” and while new improvements and versions of the protocols arrive, if we want to extract the full potential of television broadcasts we must resort to other options such as the streaming reception (on the Internet) that do not compress as much and offer resolutions of 720p or higher. How can we access these services? Below we propose the main alternatives.
Channel aggregator services
Although the main television networks currently offer the possibility of viewing their content by accessing directly from your website (here you have a list with the links to the Spanish DTT channels), if we want to zap through several of them this task becomes cumbersome and this is where the channel aggregators.
One of the simplest ways is through channel aggregation services that are basically in charge of collecting the access information of the different channels through the Internet, organizing it and exposing it to the user in a simple way for its use without complications.
TiViFy
Among the most outstanding we have, for example, TiViFy, a platform with which we can see a total of 80 online television channels on smart devices. With the free plan you can access live content from different channels without ads or payments. Channels, especially DTT, as well as the autonomous communities of several provincesand some thematic and international channels.
In addition, it allows to program recordings (only RTVE and regional in free mode), access the programming of the last 7 days (also limited to RTVE and regional and 60 hours available 30 days in free mode). With the free plan you can link 3 devices and play on only one. It can be used through an app to Android, Android TV, Google TV, iOS, iPadOS and with the web browser.
Photocall.tv
Another interesting option is Photocall.tv, an aggregator that comes with the cover letter of offering more than 1,000 TV channels in totalboth national and foreign, local and regional DTT and that boasts of having a user interface that is easy to use, fast and available to everyone.
There is no need to register or install anything and its operation is very simple. We enter your website from a web browser compatible (I have tried Firefox and Chrome and it works fine, but it should also be compatible with others like Edge or Safari) and we will see a collection of boxes with the logos of the different chains that we must click to see them on the screen.
Tell him
If we are looking for another simple formula, we can choose to enter Diretele, a web page where a multitude of links to the live broadcasts of Spanish DTT.
It is very comfortable and intuitive to use and works directly from an updated web browser without having to install anything or register, although its operation is somewhat slower than in the previous proposals.
TDTChannels
TDTChannels is a platform that collaboratively collects online radio broadcasts and free television of the Spanish DTT.
It’s completely free and without ads, and you also have a specific version for Android TV that also works on Fire TV, but we can also access it directly by entering tdtchannels.com from any browser.
Mobile operator platforms
If you are looking for more comfort of use and the best possible image qualitythen you can choose to watch DTT using some payment service that in general tend to offer a higher binary rate than conventional broadcasts and more access fast, intuitive and with extra features than the free ones.
Movistar+, Vodafone TV and Orange TV
The big operators in Spain such as Movistar, Vofafone and Orange offer their own platform to view multimedia content that we can hire in different packages, with or without additional streaming services.
offer the highest image and sound quality currently available for DTT broadcasts, especially if we access from fiber connections, without visible restrictions in the compression of the signal in most cases. Even though not all channels are in high definitionmost of the important ones do offer resolutions of 720p or 1080p (there are even specific cases of some channels at 4K), with a good bit rate and additional possibilities such as subtitles, several languages, recordings, rewind, pause the direct, etc.
They also have the advantage of incorporating a own decoder that connects with the router and offers us more comfort and ease of use, with remote control, quick access to channels and functions, etc.
In my case, we currently have the Movistar Plus+ service at home and the image quality obtained is far superior to what we achieve by accessing directly from the antenna cablein general without artifacts, with more details in the complicated areas and better color intensity.
fuboTV
Another payment alternative is FuboTV, at a price of 3.99 euros per month, it offers access to a wide collection of online channelsand services such as being able to record content to view it later.
Subscribers can access channels like Movistar Series, Nickelodeon, SYFY or MTVas well as general channels, sporting events and national DTT channels, currently totaling some 22 channels.
More information | Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation